Search form

Crackpot Theology Makes Bad Foreign Policy

With the Mideast in flames, administration policy is
in disarray. It is hard to fight terrorism and conquer Iraq without
Arab allies. But any attempt to win Arab support by pressuring
Israel might lose evangelical Christian votes. Interest groups have
long influenced American foreign policy. Rarely, however, has
foreign policy rested on theology. Even the vast majority of
American Jews who support Israel do so more on ethnic than on
religious grounds. But now some Christians are attempting to turn
the U.S. government into an arm of the church. Sympathy toward
Israel is understandable: there is no excuse for murderous suicide
bombings. Yet Washington needs to develop a Mideast policy that
advances the interests of America, not one that advances a peculiar
interpretation of Christian theology.

Georgia’s Republican state chairman, Ralph Reed, recently wrote:
“There is an undeniable and powerful spiritual connection between
Israel and the Christian faith. It is where Jesus was born and
where he conducted his ministry.”

So? This has nothing to do with the formulation of foreign
policy for the secular nation of America, which represents
non-Christians as well as Christians.

Onetime Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer goes
further: “The Bible is pretty clear that the land is what is called
covenant land, that God made a covenant with the Jews that that
would be their land forever.”

Yet the premise of Christianity is that that covenant was voided
by disobedience, and thus now runs to the body of Christian
believers.

Moreover, why assume that nonreligious Jews who established a
secular state in the Mideast are entitled to the same land once
held by religious Jews following in the line of Moses? As Marvin
Olasky, editor of World Magazine, notes, “A biblical case can
certainly be made that Israelis who are atheists have tossed away
their inheritance just as Esau did.”

And if the land was to belong to Jews forever, why did they lose
control of it? Surely God does not require America’s assistance to
give it back.

Finally, to how much are Jews entitled? A generous reading of
Genesis suggests ownership of Jordan and chunks of Iraq, Saudi
Arabia and Syria.

Another group of Christians, primarily Protestants, cite their
dispensationalist eschatology, or end times theology. Never mind
the complicated details of this minority interpretation. Backing
whoever happens to be Israel’s Prime Minister is supposed to
accelerate Christ’s return.

Of course, there is no way to prove what God actually intends.
But the dispensationalist case is particularly strained. For
instance, candidates for the Antichrist include the Pope, European
Union President Roman Prodi and England’s Prince Charles.

In fact, the book of Revelation is best understood in the
context of the Roman Empire, when it was written. It foreshadows an
apocalyptic end of mankind; it does not provide an exact time line
of events.

This argument also arrogantly assumes that the God who
reconciled mankind through the sacrifice of his son requires
Washington’s help to get the end right. Interestingly, some
Orthodox Jews are hostile to Zionism precisely because they view it
as hubris for man to try to supplant God’s timing.

Another argument is that only by supporting Israel will America
prosper. For example, activist Ed McAteer cites the promise that “I
will bless them who bless you and curse them who curse you.” Two
decades ago, the Rev. Jerry Falwell declared that God had been kind
to America only because “America has been kind to the Jews.”

Curiously, there’s no verse explaining that to bless the Jewish
people or to be kind to them means doing whatever the secular
government of a largely nonreligious people wants several thousand
years later. This is junk theology at its worst. Or almost worst.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a speech last March: “One of
the reasons I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack
against the United States of America is that the policy of our
government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with
pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the
terrorist strikes that have been launched against them.”

Wow. God is punishing the American people because their
government, which has long supported Israel more firmly than any
other, is insufficiently pro-Israel.

Speaking for the creator of the universe is a dicey proposition
and I won’t try. But presuming that a biblical injunction to
“bless” the Jewish people requires a secular state run by nominal
Christians to offer a blank check to a secular state run by ethnic
Jews is simply bizarre.

There are lots of sensible policy arguments for supporting
Israel. But conflicting interests must still be balanced. Crackpot
theology is no substitute for intelligent analysis.